Whither was she to fly?
How to live?
What good chance was to befriend her?
There was an angel watching over the steps of Mrs.Cat--not a good one, I think, but one of those from that unnameable place, who have their many subjects here on earth, and often are pleased to extricate them from worse perplexities.
Mrs.Cat, now, had not committed murder, but as bad as murder; and as she felt not the smallest repentance in her heart--as she had, in the course of her life and connection with the Captain, performed and gloried in a number of wicked coquetries, idlenesses, vanities, lies, fits of anger, slanders, foul abuses, and what not--she was fairly bound over to this dark angel whom we have alluded to; and he dealt with her, and aided her, as one of his own children.
I do not mean to say that, in this strait, he appeared to her in the likeness of a gentleman in black, and made her sign her name in blood to a document conveying over to him her soul, in exchange for certain conditions to be performed by him.

Such diabolical bargains have always appeared to me unworthy of the astute personage who is supposed to be one of the parties to them; and who would scarcely be fool enough to pay dearly for that which he can have in a few years for nothing.

It is not, then, to be supposed that a demon of darkness appeared to Mrs.Cat, and led her into a flaming chariot harnessed by dragons, and careering through air at the rate of a thousand leagues a minute.

No such thing; the vehicle that was sent to aid her was one of a much more vulgar description.
The "Liverpool carryvan," then, which in the year 1706 used to perform the journey between London and that place in ten days, left Birmingham about an hour after Mrs.Catherine had quitted that town; and as she sat weeping on a hillside, and plunged in bitter meditation, the lumbering, jingling vehicle overtook her.

The coachman was marching by the side of his horses, and encouraging them to maintain their pace of two miles an hour; the passengers had some of them left the vehicle, in order to walk up the hill; and the carriage had arrived at the top of it, and, meditating a brisk trot down the declivity, waited there until the lagging passengers should arrive: when Jehu, casting a good-natured glance upon Mrs.Catherine, asked the pretty maid whence she was come, and whether she would like a ride in his carriage.